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The foot (standard symbol: ft) [1] [2] is a unit of length in the British imperial and United States customary systems of measurement. The prime symbol, ′, is commonly used to represent the foot. [3] In both customary and imperial units, one foot comprises 12 inches, and one yard comprises three feet.
Metric units are units based on the metre, gram or second and decimal (power of ten) multiples or sub-multiples of these. According to Schadow and McDonald, [ 1 ] metric units, in general, are those units "defined 'in the spirit' of the metric system, that emerged in late 18th century France and was rapidly adopted by scientists and engineers.
The basic unit of length in the imperial and U.S. customary systems is the yard, defined as exactly 0.9144 m by international treaty in 1959. [2] [5] Common imperial units and U.S. customary units of length include: [6] thou or mil (1 ⁄ 1000 of an inch) inch (25.4 mm) foot (12 inches, 0.3048 m) yard (3 feet, 0.9144 m)
The nanometre (SI symbol: nm) is a unit of length in the metric system equal to 10 −9 metres ( 1 / 1 000 000 000 m = 0. 000 000 001 m). To help compare different orders of magnitude , this section lists lengths between 10 −9 and 10 −8 m (1 nm and 10 nm).
The 66-foot (20.1 m) chain is divided into 100 links, usually marked off into groups of 10 by brass rings or tags which simplify intermediate measurement. Each link is thus 7.92 inches (201 mm) long. A quarter chain, or 25 links, measures 16 feet 6 inches (5.03 m) and thus measures a rod (or pole).
The millimetre (mm), centimetre (cm) and the kilometre (km), derived from the metre, are also commonly used units. In U.S. customary units, English or imperial system of units, commonly used units of length are the inch (in), the foot (ft), the yard (yd), and the mile (mi). A unit of length used in navigation is the nautical mile (nmi). [7]
The National Institute of Standards and Technology formerly contended that customary area units are defined in terms of the square survey foot, not the square international foot, [17] but from 2023 it states that "although historically defined using the U.S. survey foot, the statute mile can be defined using either definition of the foot, as is ...
A base unit is a unit adopted for expressing a base quantity. A derived unit is used for expressing any other quantity, and is a product of powers of base units. For example, in the modern metric system, length has the unit metre and time has the unit second, and speed has the derived unit metre per second.